A Delicate Balance: Weighing Protest Against the Risks of the Coronavirus

As the virus has spread across the country, many conservatives have rebelled against the stringent measures supported by public health experts, and there have been skirmishes over wearing masks in public, allowing in-person religious services and placing a premium on restoring the economy over other concerns.

If the virus surges again, said Christopher F. Rufo, director of the Center on Wealth and Poverty at the Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank, the experts’ standing will have been undermined. “You’re going to have half the country that has lost faith almost completely in the public health establishment,” he said.

But it may be hard to trace infections to other protesters, who are often marching side by side with strangers. And infectious disease experts have said that any increase in cases may well be the result of the continued reopening of restaurants, workplaces and mass transit.

In Las Vegas, casinos are reopening, In New York City, long the center of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, as many as 400,000 workers on Monday can begin returning to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores as the city enters the first phase of its reopening.

“You cannot pin this on the protests,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, whose projections of the virus’s path suggest that U.S. coronavirus deaths will increase in the coming weeks. “The protests are not in and of themselves going to drive the resurgence in cases. This is associated with all the new opportunities that are providing a way for people to get together and pass the virus to one another.”

For their part, activists said the drive to protest in the face of the virus reflected the larger gravity of the moment and the intensity of their passion.

“If I get infected fighting for justice, my soul can sit with that,” said Sara Semi, 27, a protester in Minneapolis who wears a mask with a filter and carries cans of disinfectant spray. “I can’t sit at home protected by my privileges if others aren’t. I can’t sit inside my house safe while my friends and neighbors are not. Yes, corona is happening. It’s real, it’s deadly. But racism kills way more lives.”